


Big fish, small pond

by ssrhpurgatory



Series: Pre-canon ficlets and snippets [1]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Character Study, Ficlet, Gen, Mentions of systemic racism and sexism, Metaphors stretched past the breaking point, Pre-Canon, like 1976 pre-canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:28:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28104744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: Arthur Keller spends some time reflecting on a new hire.
Series: Pre-canon ficlets and snippets [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2047574
Kudos: 2





	Big fish, small pond

Arthur Keller had always prided himself on being able to recognize a big fish in a small pond. After all, he’d been one himself, hadn’t he?

But what was really important—nay, _critical_ —to the sort of company he was trying to build with Wright-Goddard was this: the ability to recognize which big fish it was safe to introduce into the ocean he swam in, and which ones should only be allowed dominion over a lake or two, lest they get big enough to try and gobble _him_ up.

Not that anyone had ever succeeded, but it was always so _very_ annoying to have to clean up the mess afterwards.

Rosemary Epps, he thought, had the potential to be a very big fish indeed. One who _would_ try to gobble him up if he wasn’t careful in how he handled her. But if he gave her just enough space to grow—and just enough busy work to keep her away from the big picture—why, she might become one of his most valuable assets.

After Dr. Pryce, of course.

It all came down to management. So often poor, and so often overlooked as a result. But an effective manager could be the difference between labs that struggled to verify results produced by others, and labs that churned out groundbreaking research like clockwork. And Rosemary, he thought, could run that sort of lab. The sort of lab that got _results_. The sort of lab that got things _done_.

He wondered whether any of her previous employers had ever figured out what sort of mind they were squandering. Obviously not any of the recent ones; the woman had been let go from her last three jobs for, as far as he could tell, kicking up a fuss about inefficient lab procedures. Certainly not behavior that would warrant a firing... unless one were both a woman and Black, two immutable aspects of her person that turned invaluable suggestions that should have gotten her a bonus into bitchy complaints that got her labeled as difficult to work with.

Still, he wondered. Perhaps none of them had ever known that Rosemary had once shown promise as a research scientist herself. More than promise—that hellcat who ran the archives had been able to dig up Rosemary’s incomplete thesis for him, and God only knew how—at the age of twenty, she had shown signs of being one of the most brilliant minds in the country.

A pity such minds were so often snuffed out early when the body they lived in didn’t match society’s idea of what the owner of a brilliant mind should look like. Oh, she had _clearly_ turned some of that untapped potential towards her current vocation, but if the world hadn’t dragged her down, she could have been so much _more_.

Arthur wondered if she felt it too. That call towards revenge, that burning urge to become something so great that no one could deny what you were and what power you had over them.

He supposed they would both find out.

And until then, he would be sure to keep her confined to a lake, just in case.


End file.
